[View Point] Breaking News: Cockroaches top Congress!

Columns - View Point

As a trade magazine journalist, I’m naturally interested in public perceptions about a wide range of subjects, including consumer attitudes about the structural pest control industry. That’s why I was both intrigued and amused when a recent study by Public Policy Polling (PPP) indicated that the 112th Congress, which battled over a wide range of contentious issues during the past two years, was less popular than root canals, head lice, NFL replacement refs, the rock band Nickelback, colonoscopies, France, Genghis Khan, cockroaches, used-car salesmen and Brussels sprouts. Ouch!

Before I poke too much fun at our country’s elected representatives, however, the media doesn’t fare much better, according to a recent Gallup survey. Gallup reported that Americans’ distrust of the “Fourth Estate” hit an all-time high in 2012, with 60 percent saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. I feel your pain, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi.

On a more positive note, according to the PPP survey, Congress did manage to beat out telemarketers (45% for Congress and 35% for the most annoying job in America), North Korea (61-26), the ebola virus (53-25), Lindsay Lohan (45-41), playground bullies (43-38), meth labs (60-21) and the Kardashians (49-36), sans Bruce Jenner, I presume.

“We all know Congress is unpopular,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling, Raleigh, N.C. “But the fact that voters like it even less than cockroaches, lice and Genghis Khan really shows how far its esteem has fallen with the American public over the last few weeks.”

[IPM Strategies] Tracking the Brown Recluse

Features - Spiders

Silverfish — a somewhat innocuous yet damaging pest with the potential to wreak havoc on a number of things you might find in an art gallery: vintage books, canvas, you name it — that’s what Tony Stobbe was looking for on a recent job at a local gallery in Fernandina Beach, Fla.

He found silverfish, but also something else entirely: the first documented population of brown recluse spiders (Loxosceles reclusa) in Nassau County, Fla. Small and venomous, the bite of a brown recluse, though considered rare, is dangerous.

“I was able to look at two initial samples,” said Stobbe, a technician with BugOut Service, Jacksonville, Fla. Stobbe said that in late May 2012, he had returned to check up on several glueboards he had placed throughout the gallery, and there they were — spiders. Stobbe had a sneaking suspicion of their identity. “They had six eyes in the perfect arrangement, the perfect amount of hair. I was pretty positive those two were recluse spiders.

“Ever since then it’s been kind of a personal battle, you might call it,” he continued. “Almost a kind of hobby. I would stop by every couple of weeks, to try to track them.”

Since he found those first specimens, Stobbe estimated that he’s found a total of 80 brown recluse spiders inside the small art gallery, both alive and dead. “They were living it up,” Stobbe said. “It was amazing when I started going through all the old files, in the boxes. I can’t believe nobody was harmed over the years with that many spiders.”

An IPM Strategy. Stobbe credited an Integrated Pest Management approach in his successful identification and management of the spider population. He said the location of the infestation posed a challenge.

“The gallery is quite an old building,” he said, noting that the structure has housed a wide variety of different tenants over the years. For instance, a restaurant occupied the space before it became a gallery. “There’s lots of strange construction, which made (the spiders) hard to track. Usually the recluse spiders are transported by freight, movement in and out. The gallery doesn’t have a whole lot of packing coming and going. I’m curious if there is any other activity at any of the other buildings nearby.”

BugOut performed specialized treatments on the building on a handful of occasions to control the population. Stobbe said he used a map of the building to track the spiders’ locations.

Goodbye, Spiders. Since first discovering the infestation last year, Stobbe and BugOut Technical Director Linda Prentice have been able to stop the brown recluses in their tracks. At its worst, Stobbe said he was finding up to six spiders upon each inspection. That number has dwindled.

“I’ve gone through at least 110 insect traps,” Stobbe said. “As crazy as it might sound, I’m going to miss (the spiders) when they’re gone. It’s been like a hobby for me to see how many of them I could collect. It’s a regular account so we’ll be checking it at least once per month through (2013) just to make sure.”

Stobbe said he felt satisfaction in his encounter with the brown recluses. The species has a habit of popping up throughout the state of Florida every so often, though according to the Journal of Medical Entomology, not often enough to warrant Florida being considered a state where the spiders have an established presence.

Features - Industry Events

In mid-November, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) hosted a series of meetings developed to provide training on the science of entomology to the pest management industry. A full-day educational program titled “Under the Lens: The Science of Urban Pest Management” (UTL), was held in Knoxville, Tenn., concurrently with the ESA’s 60th Annual Meeting, also held in Knoxville.

“Our thinking in putting this event together was that since we have all of these incredible industry leaders gathered together in one spot, it would be great to put their knowledge and enthusiasm to use for the greater good,” says Chris Stelzig, ESA’s director of certification.

The UTL attendees participated in seminars on topics ranging from “Entomology 101” and “Innovative Techniques in Bed Bug Management” to “Impacts of Recent Pyrethroid Label Changes” and “Servicing Affordable Multifamily Housing.” A total of eight 50-minute sessions filled the day. Regulators from Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, North Carolina, Mississippi, Virginia and Georgia approved CEU educational credits toward state licensing requirements for participants in this training seminar.

The following day, ESA offered an ACE Prep Course, designed to enhance the knowledge of those who were preparing to take the Associate Certified Entomologist (ACE) exam. Forty-six pest management professionals participated in the class. Many of the class participants took their ACE exams the following morning, which was given online in a proctored setting — standard protocol for ACE exams.

The prep course sessions were led by highly trained educators from across the country. The purpose of the course was not to teach PMPs all that they need to know to pass their ACE exams. Rather, according to Stelzig, “The prep course was designed to give the applicants an opportunity to review what they already know and to highlight areas that they needed to focus on with their studies.”

A Record Day. On the same day, just a few hundred miles south, the Georgia Pest Control Association also hosted an ACE Prep Course and exam. The result was a record number of people testing for their ACEs on the same day — 38. Of the 38, 24 passed their exam and are now ACE certified. They are:

Chad Cain, Webster Exterminators (McDonough, Ga.)

Dan Cassidy, The Bug Man (Murfreesboro, Tenn.)

Jay Connors, Terminix (Orlando, Fla.)

Nathan Frushour, Preventive Pest Control (Albuquerque, N.M.)

Charles Gates, Skyline Pest Solutions (McDonough, Ga.)

Wayne Hammond, Ecolab Pest Elimination (Charlotte, N.C.)

Patrick Hickman, OPC Pest Control (Louisville, Ky.)

Betty Hilger, Orkin (Bloomington, Ind.)

Gene Hilger, Orkin (Bloomington, Ind.)

Tim Jackson, Ace Exterminating (Clarksville, Tenn.)

William Keesee, BB Pest Control (Lincoln Park, Mich.)

David Mante, Homak Exterminating (Norcross, Ga.)

Kevin Mills,OPC Pest Control (Louisville, Ky.)

Jim Orr, Univar (Soddy Daisy, Tenn.)

Brett Partin, OPC Pest Control (Louisville, Ky.)

Donald Partin, OPC Pest Control (Shepherdsville, Ky.)

Shaun Reeves, Reeves Pest Control (Culleoka, Tenn.)

Peter Schonemann, Russ Pest Control (Winterville, N.C.)

Ron Schwalb, Nisus Corporation (Rockford, Tenn.)

Timothy Sherrer, Expest Exterminating (Snellville, Ga.)

Michael Spry, Precision Services Management (Valley Grove, W. Va.)

Robert Teal, Terminix (St Augustine, Fla.)

Aron Thomas, Advanced Services for Pest Control (Augusta, Ga.)

Aaron Veal, Russell’s Pest Control (Knoxville, Tenn.)

Additionally, the following PMPs tested for their ACE or Board Certified Entomologist (BCE) certifications in November and are now certified:

BCE — Miroslav Gajovic, Orkin (Calgary, Alberta)

BCE — Kyle Jordan, BASF (Atlanta)

BCE — Allison Taisey, Northeastern IPM Center (Ithaca, N.Y.)

ACE — Doug Botham, Schendel Pest Services (Harwood, Mo.)

ACE — Randall Coleman, Alert One Pest Control (Joplin, Mo.)

ACE — Joseph Davidson, Schendel Pest Services (Topeka, Kan.)

ACE — Anthony Hahn, Hahn Exterminators (Springfield, Mo.)

ACE — Robert Lowe, Ecolab (Eagan, Minn.)

ACE — William Melville, Orkin (Mississauga, Ontario)

Increased Visibility. The large number of applicants and new ACEs is due in part to an increased presence of the ESA at pest management events around the country. The ACE program, which was first introduced in 2004, also has begun to be adopted by the marketplace as a “must have” for industry professionals.

The BCE program is geared toward those with degrees in entomology or a related field. The ACE program is focused on those with hands-on training and professional development in the field of structural pest management.

ESA says becoming Board or Associate Certified can help PMPs and technicians gain better visibility, be recognized as an expert in the field, and provide them with greater career opportunities. Visit www.entocert.org to learn more.

“In the past when I met PMPs at industry events and discussed the benefits of ACE certification, I had to spend a lot of time explaining what ESA and the Certification Corporation are and what we do. Now, whether it’s at NPMA’s PestWorld, or another industry event, people approach me to ask how they can become certified. Clearly, the word is getting out that we offer a valuable certification program,” says Stelzig.

The ACE program is undergoing a thorough review with a revised content outline and updated questions that will debut later this year.

“This intent is to ensure that the ACE program is current, relevant, and a direct reflection of the work experience of a high caliber pest management professionals,” says Col. (Dr.) Mustapha Debboun, BCE, director of the Certification Board — the body that oversees the ESA certification programs. “They may work for a large national pest management firm, a small owner-operated pest control organization, or even other areas of Integrated Pest Management, like the ones provided in the military.”

ESA Heads to Austin
This year’s annual Entomological Society of America meeting, Entomology 2013, will be held Nov. 10-13 in Austin, Texas.

To Learn More
ESA’s certification program exhibited at the Annual Purdue Pest Management conference earlier this month in West Lafayette, Ind., and will exhibit at the 2013 DoD Triennial Pest Management Workshop in Jacksonville, Fla., Feb. 3-8. Those interested in certification can visit ESA there or download all the materials from the www.entocert.org website. For more information on the program, contact Chris Stelzig at cstelzig@entsoc.org.

[ESA Coverage] When the Ants Went Marching, the Cameras Started Rolling

Features - Industry Events

Editor’s note: The following article originally appeared in the Nov. 19, 2012, edition of The New York Times. The videos mentioned here were submitted by entomologists for the 2012 ESA YouTube Your Entomology Contest. To see them, visit http://nyti.ms/SOlvzX.

As soon as the ants start streaming across the screen in the video “Ants Africa,” you know trouble is afoot — on many, many feet actually.

You know this partly because 36 seconds into the video, these words appear on screen: “A raiding column of female ants is on the hunt for prey,” and partly because of the ominous bass-driven music, “Mind Heist,” from the trailer to the movie “Inception.”

Clearly, this video is not going to have a happy ending.

These are predatory ants. They are fast. They are numerous. And they are living the purpose-driven life, the purpose being to kill some termites for lunch. Sure enough, the screen informs us, “Within a few minutes, a thousand termites are dead.”

“Ants Africa” is the winner in the Open category in the 2012 YouTube Your Entomology Contest, a competition sponsored by the Entomological Society of America, which recently held its annual meeting in Knoxville. The entries in this category and others can be viewed online, along with videos from the past three years. The contest started in 2009, and the top winners receive $200 and a trophy.

The videos offer a mix of entertaining natural history dramas like “Ants Africa” and earnest, instructional presentations, like “Soybean Aphid Speed Scouting — How To?,” which won in the Outreach category.

They also offer hope for amateurs who have marveled at brilliant professional insect documentaries by the likes of David Attenborough. These are videos made by professional entomologists, but decidedly amateur videographers.

Just as bird-watching became a possible hobby for the average person after World War I, when good binoculars became available to the public, watching and recording insects on video is now possible if you can afford a few hundred dollars for a camera.

I talked to Marlin E. Rice, who made “Ants Africa,” about how he did it. Dr. Rice, who started the video contest, is a former president of the entomological society and a former professor of entomology at Iowa State University. He now works for DuPont Pioneer on the resistance of genetically modified corn to insect pests.

He and his wife regularly go to Zambia to do volunteer work at an orphanage through their church. While there, he carries his video camera, which he bought a few years ago for “a couple hundred dollars,” he said. “It’s an old Sony model, only 2.1 megapixels.”

In Zambia, he said, the ants were a regular sight, and whenever he saw them on the march, he would set down his video camera and record them.

“That video has footage from five different trips to Zambia,” he said.

He edited the footage with iMovie and added the soundtrack, which struck him the first time he heard it.

“When that heavy bass came along when I was listening to ‘Mind Heist’,” he said, “I could picture ants crossing a landscape.”

His video had some impressive competition, like “Life in the Gutter,” a look at the kind of insect life that can thrive in less than pristine urban water flows, and “Hornworm Meets ‘Alien’,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

In that entry, a horrifying number of parasitic wasp larvae — tiny translucent wormy things — tunnel through the skin of their host, a tomato hornworm, a large, green caterpillar that, if it hadn’t been eaten from the inside out, would have grown up to be a Carolina sphinx moth.

No music is necessary for this video to ruin your lunch (I was eating at my desk when I started it and had to stop and come back to it later), but the cheery Latin brass and drums do enhance the pageantry of parasitic infection.

All of the videos that feature insects (some focus on entomologists, who are much less interesting than their subjects of study) should inspire other amateurs, and that alone makes the contest a worthy enterprise. Dr. Price, though, said it was really designed just to encourage society members to have a bit of fun with their profession.

Once a video goes on YouTube, anything is possible. As soon as I started watching “Ants Africa,” for instance, an ad popped up for “NY’s #1 Pest Pro.” A bit harsh, I thought.

But if you stumbled upon the video by mistake, of course, the availability of exterminators might be comforting. The company does promise same-day service.

[Fleet Management] It’s 10 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Trucks Are?

Features - Business Strategy

A few years ago while attending NPMA PestWorld in New Orleans, Roger Graham, general manager at Arrow Exterminators, Broken Arrow, Okla., got a call from one of his supervisors while Graham was perusing the exhibition floor.

“He said, ‘Hey, one of our technicians is supposed to be here, but he’s not answering his phone, and we don’t know what’s going on,’” Graham said. Not far from the US Fleet Tracking booth, and needing to figure out where the MIA technician might be, Graham said he asked an exhibitor if he could pull up his account — Arrow Exterminators uses US Fleet Tracking, a GPS tracking system package that monitors each truck and employee in the firm’s fleet. Indeed, Graham logged into the online system at one of the booth’s computers, called his supervisor and notified him of the employee’s position. Problem resolved.

“It’s pretty neat what it does,” Graham said.

US Fleet Tracking, and other companies marketing and manufacturing GPS tracking products, allow management throughout various industries to track vehicles. With this kind of system, managers can monitor and track their company’s fleet from their computers, tablets and smartphones. For the pest control industry, utilizing such technology can mean easier management of service vehicles, increased efficiency in routing and insurance that technicians are using their vehicles strictly for the job.

Route Efficiency. Sam Sims, director of public relations and marketing, US Fleet Tracking, said the company’s tagline aptly sums up what their products do. “We do tracking for everything that moves,” he said.

For PCOs, this means keeping tabs on service vehicles by means of US Fleet Tracking’s Internet-based interface. As technicians largely work from the road, servicing clients across a certain geographic area, Sims said the company’s product is a good way to boost efficiency — if a new service call comes in, managers can pull up their fleet on a computer, determine which technician is closest to the site, and assign duties accordingly.

“Imagine someone has called you, you have service calls all over the city, and you look at them all over the map,” Sims said. The software can determine how long a service vehicle has been at a nearby site, and thus estimate how long the technician’s job at that site will last, for instance, and a manager can make an assignment that makes the most sense. “The pest control industry is an important industry to what we do,” Sims said, and added that fleet tracking makes sense in small- to mid-sized businesses, a mold into which pest control firms frequently fit.

Graham said he has used several products to manage his fleet, and before he began using fleet tracking software and GPS systems, the process was far more cumbersome. And as Arrow Exterminators covers the majority of northeastern Oklahoma, this was no easy task, either.

“For years, when I would have to re-route accounts, there was no easy way to do it,” Graham said. “There was no software that would do it, so you could either print off logs, sheets and sheets of accounts and try to figure it out, or use grid maps. The easiest thing that I found was making little postcards with every account, then separating them by areas, figuring out how many each tech would be able to handle.”

Graham said that even before his company began using fleet tracking software, he prided himself on helping Arrow become more efficient in terms of routing — but now that each vehicle is equipped with a GPS system, the process is easier to manage. “When I took over this position, routing and scheduling in the service department, just by rearranging the routes I shaved off time,” he said. “People just thought they knew which was the best way (to get to a job).” Many times, they didn’t.

While Graham said implementing the system from US Fleet Tracking was worth his while, it does come with small tradeoffs. “The technology is great as long as someone is looking at it,” he said. A problem Arrow has had, he said, is ensuring that someone is able to take the time to log in and check on things.

Heightened route efficiency can help a pest control firm cut costs, especially considering the high price of gasoline, Graham said. But more than just mapping out quicker routes between jobs, the use of the software alerted Graham to a problem he wouldn’t have known existed otherwise.

“When I started running idle time reports, I was shocked at how often people would just sit around with their truck running for no reason,” he said, noting a feature of the US Fleet Tracking software that can track if a car is on, but not moving.

“I had employees that would have their truck idling 30, 40, 50 minutes, just not going anywhere. One guy debated with me that it doesn’t cost that much more to idle the vehicle versus turning it on and off.” After running comparative reports, Graham said he discovered that such idling time racked up a fuel bill totaling more than $200 more in one month than had the truck been turned off. “That’s just what I saved on fuel just from correcting that one person.”

The Mobile Workforce. Communication with your workforce is key, said Joe Boyle, vice president of customer experience for Fleetmatics, another manufacturer of fleet tracking software and GPS devices. Software like that from his company can be a way to improve these lines of communication, he said.

“Running a mobile workforce comes with its challenges,” he said. “You don’t always know where they are, and the nature of being out in the field, there’s the reality that you have a substantial amount of assets out there in the field, and they’re expensive.”

As well, Boyle said, most service vehicles act as something of a “mobile bill board” for a pest control company — and managing trucks that have your company’s name and logo to uphold the good reputation of the company is important. “You want to make sure that drivers are doing the speed limits in residential areas, not peeling around a corner,” Boyle said. “It’s really all about visibility and management of that mobile workforce.”

Boyle noted the strong focus on customer service in the pest control industry, and said that Fleetmatics products are a way for PCOs to enhance that customer service. “Your customers have to somewhat act on faith, (your technicians) are coming out and applying a spray, they’re setting traps,” he said. That proof of service can enhance a pest control company’s reputation for customer service, he said.

Jeff Graisser, vice president of operations for Viking Termite and Pest Control, Bridgewater, N.J., said his company uses SageQuest, a tracking brand owned by Fleetmatics. Graisser said the software has allowed him to successfully rebuff some customer complaints that a service technician did not properly do their job at an account.

“We’ve had scenarios where a customer calls us up, and says, ‘This guy was never here,’” Graisser said. “You can go in and do a kind of breadcrumb trail and see where the technician was, and you can say, ‘Hey, he was there, here he was parked right in front of your house, and here’s how long he was there.’”

Arrow’s Graham concurred with the use of defending technician’s work to skeptical customers. “When we first started using (a termite bait system), we had so many complains, ‘Your technician wasn’t here for more than five minutes.’ Once (the customers) understood we were checking to make sure the employees were going the work they were supposed to do, that pretty much stopped the complaints.’”

Managing for Misbehavior. Another advantage for PCOs using fleet tracking products is the ability to know when and if staff members in the field are doing things they aren’t supposed to.

“I think the biggest advantage is saving on labor cost,” Graisser said. “You have a better handle on what the guys are doing. We went through the whole ‘Big Brother’ thing initially, but they follow the rules, they go where they’re supposed to go.”

Graham said his systems were installed to help the company, not because he believed his employees were breaking protocol. “We were honest and up front with everybody, we told them point blank, ‘We’re putting these in, this is why,’” he said. “We’re not looking to catch anybody doing anything, we just want to know what’s going on. Most of them don’t have a problem, and the ones that are worried probably are doing something wrong. And they shouldn’t be doing it on your dime. If there’s an issue it will be dealt with.”

One issue that service company owners must deal with occasionally is staff performing side jobs for cash. US Fleet Tracking’s Sims said that issue can be immediately rectified with tracking products. “That stops instantly,” Sims said. “(A company) might have a crew out that’s treated three or four houses in a neighborhood, but they didn’t realize another three or four houses were treated for cash.” This equates for a loss of products, labor and potential revenue, Sims said.

Fleet tracking systems can set speed limits on vehicles, and Graisser said he has taken advantage of another function where he can set a “geofence” around certain areas. “This would be somewhere you don’t want your vehicles to go,” he said. “For example, I don’t want a guy sleeping in a park for four hours, or you don’t want a guy routinely stopping off somewhere. We have those set up for everybody’s home, so when they do get within 100 feet of their house, an alert will go off to their manager.

“It’s all a matter of managing what these guys are doing out there on the road,” he continued, and added that he feels the SageQuest system has improved productivity since the company began using it. “We’ve done a lot of other things over that period of time as well. This has been a part of it.”